Brave New Kitty

From Wikipedia.com:
A wiki ( /ˈwɪki/ WIK-ee) is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinkedweb pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative wiki websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.

And, from the same site, basic wiki characteristics:

• A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.
• Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.
• A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.

I know Wikipedia has kind of a bad reputation as a source for reliable information. Because it’s written by users, many people think this makes it unreliable: the people who write the entries don’t have to be experts, and what’s to stop them from writing biased information? While these are both true, I still like Wikipedia as a good go-to source for basic information. And I like the philosophy underlying Wikipedia even more.

As a place for people to get an overview of a topic they’re unfamiliar with, I’m not sure if any other Internet source equals Wikipedia. As a writer who has done some writing for the Internet, I know that the “experts” on many sites are often just people who applied for a job, and are not screened for either level of expertise or bias. And yet there is rarely a disclaimer explaining this, so we can never really be sure how good the information is.

On Wikipedia, the solution to that problem is built into the format. Yes, Wikipedia is written by users, but it is also policed by users, so anybody can write their objections right into an entry. If an entry is biased, or even if somebody thinks it might be, this is noted right on the page. So even if an entry is biased, people are still more likely to get a balanced picture than they would from many other sites that claim to be go-to sites but offer the reader no way to verify the information they find there. Wikipedia includes comments, explanations, and links to other information about a topic. This creates not just objectivity, but a system of objectivity that largely solves the biggest problem in getting information from the Internet: determining its accuracy.

I think that’s pretty compelling. Wikipedia isn’t selling anything and has no agenda beyond achieving as much accuracy as possible. And this is the underlying philosophy of Wikipedia that I find even more compelling: by providing an open forum for an exchange of ideas among all the users of the site, Wiki has created an online community dedicated to, for lack of a better term, truth-seeking. It is also a collaborative effort in the truest sense. These ideas–collaboration and truth-seeking–are often preached in organizations and business, but rarely is such preaching more than lip service. The politics of competition, greed, and all the other baser traits of human nature, usually win out. Not so with Wikipedia. It is a genuine collaborative effort that seems to bring out the best in its contributors the vast majority of the time. It is a model we could all learn something from.

If I need a more detailed explanation of something, or am actually looking for a site with a bias I happen to agree with, I’ll use another source. But for basic introductory information, Wikipedia is hard to beat. The Internet is full of lazy writing, bad sources, and unspoken agendas, but Wikipedia is one of the few sites I know of that actively circumvents these weaknesses. One of the most powerful aspects of the Internet is the free exchange of ideas it provides, and Wikipedia is an excellent example of that. To be biased against it because it acknowledges and accounts for its own limitations seems, in my opinion, to be biased against the process of truth-seeking itself. Or at the very least, to not understand it very well.

That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. — Ayn Rand

The fundamentalist religious people, such as those pushing a creationist agenda in public schools that I wrote about in my last post, believe that the godlessness of modern secular culture has created a moral crisis that is the root of all our social problems: divorce, alcoholism and drug addiction, crime, gangs, teen sex and pregnancy, the high rate of depression, violence in schools, and every other societal ill you can name. Their solution is to revert to the culture of 300 years ago, when religion had firm control of society. They believe that back then, few of these social ills existed, and certainly not to the extent they do now, because people were still “god-fearing” (their own terminology). Their methods are to push their religious ideas back onto the culture through propaganda of every conceivable form and through political power, which they’ve gained with alarming success. They already have so much power in the Republican party that it’s become difficult to separate the ideologies of the two groups. If they have their way, the U.S. would become a Jesus-centric theocracy. They truly believe this is the answer to solving the complex and multi-layered problems of modern society.

They are, of course, wrong. And they are wrong mostly because they don’t understand what morality is. At first glance, it does seem that modern culture is less moral than the culture of a few hundred years ago, and that this lack of morality could be attributable to people being less religious than they used to be. If you understand morality, though, it’s easy to see the fallacy in both of these positions.

Interestingly, the fundamentalists are correct that morality is lacking in most people’s lives. This moral deficiency, though, has always existed. People aren’t less moral than they once were, they are just less god-fearing. I mean this very literally: back then, people were easier to keep in line because they were afraid of the consequences of their actions. It was fear of hell, not moral agency, that kept them in line.

As the quote at the beginning of this post says, morality only exists in the context of choice. Morality is perhaps man’s greatest achievement, and also his most hard won fight, requiring an investment of time and effort in deciding the right and wrong of things, the why of this right and wrong, and then, the vigilant application of this hard-won belief system to all areas of his life. It is not easy to be a moral person because it demands critical thinking and a constant eye toward truth and justice. But the reward is great: a level of self-respect that can not be found by any other path.

To mistake fear of consequences for moral choice is to make an error of vast proportions. It’s like mistaking cheating for studying, and shows a complete misunderstanding of human motivation. It is insulting to anybody who has made the effort to lead a moral life. This is not to say that people can’t find moral agency in a religious life, because many earnest seekers have done so. But religion in only the vehicle, and it must be one pursued voluntarily. Such moral agency is not something that can be forced on people, not by religion or any other means, because such coercion is the antithesis of moral choice.

Thus, a return to old-fashioned religious “morality” is not the answer for our modern godless society. Thinking it is the answer is akin to thinking that a return to living in caves and shooting our food with bows and arrows will solve our energy consumption problems. Even if the U.S. were to become a Jesus-centric theocracy (an appalling thought), it would only increase the black market demand for all the naughty things that people want: drugs, sex, pornography, gambling, etc., because you can force compliance (or at least the appearance of it), but you can’t force true, internal choice. People must come to that–can only come to that–on their own.

I think that in trying to understand the ills of our modern godless society, it is important to see its low moral standards as a continuation of what already existed; a new, more technologically complex, iteration of an old problem. In this light, somewhat ironically, our modern godless society is a moral leap forward rather than backward. Throwing off the chains of control by fear is a positive thing, even if it has, indeed, ushered in new problems. Namely, that the freer people are to do what they want, the more imperative it becomes to make good moral choices.

Therein lies the crux of it. Few have stepped up to the task of being a free moral agent, and that–not lack of religion–is the real problem we face. Why? Because being a moral agent is hard, much harder than following externally imposed rules. We threw off one burden only to be saddled with another, which was the freedom–and responsibility–of defining our own morality. While this is a far better problem to have than fear of eternal damnation, it is also a far more difficult one to solve, involving personal agency, acceptance of free will, and the willingness to take complete responsibility for ourselves and our choices.

We, as a society, are still largely trying to work this out. We find ourselves torn between the seduction of a sure thing that we no longer really believe in, and the ambiguity of being a free moral agent that we do believe in, but which scares the hell out of us (forgive the pun). As obvious as the choice is, it can still be a hard one to make.

I don’t have a solution, but I know that reverting to old standards won’t solve our problems. Rather, we must learn to own and cherish our agency and see it as a gift of the Enlightenment, which it is, rather than as a problem to be avoided. How do we do this? I’m not sure. But understanding the issue seems like a good start. And putting fundamentalist religious ideas to rest once and for all, as well as all the other true believerisms that offer solace from personal agency and a false promise of unambiguous moral surety, seems essential.

Religion has never had a corner on morality, and it never will. Morality can only be the province of free people, people who are fully able to choose a course of action by their own power. This may be a bigger problem to solve than following external rules, but it is one I am more grateful to have than words can express.

If you believe in god, I don’t. If you don’t, then I do. — Alan Watts, paraphrased

I like to to learn about points of view that I disagree with or flat out believe to be wrong. Learning about other points of view not only helps me clarify my own thoughts, it also sometimes changes my mind. So the other night, I watched a “documentary” about Intelligent Design called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I was curious how the Creationists frame their argument that creationism–the belief that the Christian god created the earth in seven days; renamed “intelligent design” by its proponents after “creationism” was ruled to interfere with the separation of church and state when they tried to get it taught in public schools–should be given a voice in science classes so children can have a “more balanced” education.

By my use of quotation marks, you may have already surmised that my opinion about creationism is decided, and that I believe it is an irrational view. This is absolutely true. And having studied spirituality, philosophy, and religion for years now, I have sound, rational, critically-thought-out reasons for this position. I know my thoughts will evolve further, as I continue to read and study, but I am one hundred percent certain that I will never, ever be convinced that the myths of origin in the Bible are anything other than man’s early attempts to explain the mystery of existence. The crazy thing is, I do believe in intelligent design! But my belief has nothing to do with the mean-spirited, self-serving, narrow-minded, intellectually dishonest propaganda that the intelligent design supporters spout in this film.

The main premise of the film is that scientists who believe in intelligent design are being persecuted by the “Darwinian” scientific establishment (which includes the universtities and colleges, the government, the legal system, the public school system, mainstream journalism, and probably most other non-Christian based organizations). They interviewed several scientists who were fired and otherwise ostracized (for example, publicly shamed or blacklisted) for “even raising the possibility” that intelligent design could be a plausible explanation for the origins of life. From these “shocking abuses of power” and “scientific closed-mindedness,” the film goes on to ask, “What’s so threatening about intelligent design?” and “What are the Darwinians so afraid of?”

The film frames the dilemma as an issue of free speech, questioning whatever happened to the freedom to dissent and express opposing views. After all, it tells us, evolution is “only a theory.” Why, the narrator wonders, is the scientific establishment so set on quashing this alternate theory? The narrator goes on to explore Darwinism and intelligent design by interviewing several knowledgeable people in both fields. Of course, it comes to the conclusion, via carefully edited conversations and straw-man arguments, that intelligent design does, indeed, deserve an equal voice, and furthermore, that we must question the motives of the scientists who believe otherwise.

I haven’t seen such vicious intellectual dishonesty since the last Michael Moore film I watched. First of all, the film presents itself as an unbiased exploration of the evolution/intelligent design debate when in fact it was written, produced, and directed by people with an agenda to get creationism taught in public schools alongside evolution. Secondly, the proponents of intelligent design carefully omit any reference to god as the intelligent designer when in fact, their beliefs are derived explicitly from the Biblical story of creation, and the designer they neglect to name is the Christian god who they believe wrote it. (They do this to circumvent the separation of church and state so they can push their agenda in public schools, and also to create the illusion that intelligent design is a valid scientific theory.) Thirdly, in an attempt to scare people and discredit evolution, the film makes outrageous associations between Darwinism and fascism, Darwinism and communism, and Darwinism and moral bankruptcy. It went so far as to show footage of concentration camps and Nazi doctors, Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khruschev, guillotines, and other scenes of atrocity and horror, presumably to show what happens when godless philosophies are allowed to dominate society. Last but far from least, the interviews with Darwinian scientists are manipulated and edited so the audience will see what the filmmakers want them to see. For example, Richard Dawkins, one of the Darwinian scientists interviewed, saying it is possible that intelligent design, if a fact, could have originated with extraterrestrial aliens. Dawkins’ sarcasm was deliberately misinterpreted to make him look ridiculous, as were the comments of many other scientists sincerely trying to describe and explain difficult scientific concepts.

This last point was substantiated by looking into the making of the film (and most of this is old news, the film having come out over a year ago, so forgive me if you’re already familiar with the issue). The Darwinian scientists were deliberately misled by the filmmakers into believing that they were being interviewed for an impartial look at intelligent design. When some of them showed up for opening night, an event anyone could attend by signing up on the Internet, they were forcibly removed from the premises and not allowed to watch the film. For a fascinating account of this, see an article by Richard Dawkins here. Dissenting opinions were definitely not welcome.

I could go on, but I think all of this suffices as evidence that this was not a documentary, but rather, a carefully orchestrated piece of propaganda meant to look like a documentary. And this, more than anything, is what I have a problem with.

I don’t mind people believing differently than I do, even if I think their ideas are vastly incomplete (as is the case with fundamentalist religious people). Everybody is free to believe as they see fit, as long as those beliefs don’t cause harm to others. I can even abide a degree of intellectual dishonesty, as we are all always struggling for higher degrees of truth, both personally and philosophically, whether we do so consciously or not. What I absolutely can not abide is blatant propaganda deliberately meant to deceive, manipulate, and play on people’s emotions, which is what this film was. I find it chilling that these Christians intended to cloud the truth, that doing so was a calculated strategy in making a film that would get their point across. They slanted with gusto, lied with abandon, discredited without remorse, all in support of a belief that they made not a single attempt to define, describe, or explain why it deserves equal billing with evolution.

What does this say about their beliefs? More importantly, what does it say about their morals? Or more accurately, their lack thereof?

To frame this issue as minority group being persecuted by an establishment that squelches free speech and dissenting opinion is a ridiculous straw man argument that falls apart with the slightest shaking, and I believe the makers of the film know this, or they would have made some attempt somewhere in the film to make a rational case for intelligent design. This is not an issue of free speech–people are free to voice their opinions in this country, religious or otherwise. And it is not an issue of the majority squelching a minority opinion (as the fundamentalist Christians feel so justified in doing to all other religious and spiritual points of view). It is an issue of what constitutes science.

Creationism–intelligent design–is not researched in science labs or taught in science classes for one very simple reason: it is not scientific. If Christians bristle at that statement, it is only because they don’t understand what it means. Let me explain. Science concerns itself only with empirical evidence, with that which can be observed, tested, quantified, and explained. The scientific method is based on falsifiability–any claim must be able to be proven wrong by scientific testing or verifiable evidence. For example, the theory of evolution can easily be proven wrong: all that’s required is evidence that life evolves by means other than natural selection. And for the last 150 years, scientists have been quite busy looking for such evidence, which hasn’t yet been found.

On the other hand, the claim that a supernatural being created the world in seven days is neither falsifiable nor provable. You could just as easily say that the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster or that a milk jug answers prayers (the answer is just always “no”). People have been searching for definitive evidence of god for centuries, and nothing substantial has been found to either support or deny his existence. Since this is a non-falsifiable claim, science doesn’t concern itself with it. So it isn’t that scientists shun intelligent design, it’s that, because it is not a testable claim, it is outside the realm of science.

And thus, does not belong in a science laboratory or classroom.

The great irony is that intelligent design is a valid explanation for the origins of life. There is a creative emergence that seems to govern all evolution; that is, it seems we are evolving toward something. But this is not how the fundamentalist proponents of intelligent design see it. They have a single, narrow agenda to attribute this design to the Christian god, and thus miss the entire point about the wonder and awe that anything is alive at all; by fighting for their tree, they miss the entire forest. And because of this, they debate with science on its own terms, thereby getting it wrong every time. They think they need to defeat science or somehow win an argument with science, which they cannot do and do not need to do to maintain validity.

Science and religion are separate provinces. They complement each other. They fill in gaps for each other. What religion does–offer hope, faith, comfort, moral guidance, etc.–science can not. What science does–answer questions about the natural world, raise the quality of life, etc.–religion can not. There is no need for competition or debate between the two; they serve separate, but equally important, purposes.

This is probably difficult for anyone who interprets the Bible literally, as Christian fundamentalists do, to understand. They are, as Joseph Campbell eloquently said, “stuck in the metaphor,” which means that they use myth to substantiate their beliefs as facts. Such literal interpretation is problematic, to say the least, for more rationally minded people, and is the root of all the problems between science and religion. Even sadder, however, is that such literal interpretation fails to recognize the true meaning of the myths.

Fundamentalists don’t understand their own religion, and I find this sad indeed. They focus on defending myth as fact and on forcing this hopeless and pointless agenda onto a world that has outgrown it–an agenda that has nothing to do with morality, spiritual enlightenment, or improving the quality of life on the planet. They would do better to busy themselves with understanding the myths of their own religion, how they can be applied to their own lives today, and how doing so could help ease the suffering of the modern world, which is definitely a spiritual dilemma, but absolutely not a religious one. (For an interesting study of this, see Rollo May’s The Cry for Myth.)

Intelligent design is a valid idea about the origins of life, but not from the fundamentalist viewpoint, which misunderstands almost completely what this really means. This would be sad if it weren’t for their tactics, which make them pathetic and despicable–a sad display for those interested in seeking a spiritual path, atheist and non-atheist alike, and even for fundamentalists who have any interest in gaining the respect of those who disagree with them.

I talk a lot about how profoundly childhood can affect adulthood, about family dysfunction and abuse and invalidation and less-than-perfect parents. I want to be utterly and completely clear that none of this is about blame. Ever. It is about understanding.

If you learn one lesson in life, it should be to look within first. If you’re unhappy, if you want to change, if you’re angry or hurt or stuck, if you’re in an unsatisfying relationship, if you’re not doing what you want with your life, look within first. Unless you are an indentured servant or otherwise forcibly prevented from making your own choices, that is the beginning and end of all the answers you’ll ever need. And if for some reason you are prevented from making your own choices, it is still the answer (see Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl).

If you really want to change, it is helpful to start by understanding why you’re stuck, why you’re unhappy, why you’re angry, why you use drugs and alcohol more than you want to, why you keep getting into unsatisfying relationships, etc., etc, etc. Understanding means looking within. And if you look within deeply enough, the mysteries of the choices you make will begin to unravel. And those mysteries generally lay in childhood, in our early conditioning and how we learned to see ourselves and our place in the world. If we were generally valued (and I say “generally” because all parents fall short of this sometimes), we learn to value ourselves. If we were not generally valued, then we learn to not value ourselves. This is an extreme oversimplification of an extremely complex topic, full of a vast range of possibilities and shades of gray, but it conveys the basic gist of what’s concerned.

So if we look within, we will inevitably begin to see that the ways we weren’t valued when we were children have a definite relationship to the troubles we experience in the present. For example, if I was conditioned to believe as a child that other people’s (my parents) feelings took precedence over my own, I am going to carry that into adulthood. This can manifest in many different ways, from having emotionally distant relationships to burying myself in a career where feelings are “unimportant.” We always have valid reasons for our choices and actions. Looking within is how we come to understand what they are.

When we begin to make these connections, we tend to get very angry and hold our parents accountable for all of our present day misery. This is a natural reaction to the realization that we weren’t loved as well as we could have been. But while passing through this phase is normal, staying there is pointless and self-destructive. Blaming the past for present troubles does not one whit to overcome them. In fact, it makes them worse by giving them the power to continue hurting us–except this time, it is us hurting ourselves.

If you stay with the process of looking within, this issue of blame will resolve itself. The more you unravel your inner mysteries, the more you will come to realize that everybody suffers, everybody has a painful past, everybody in some way or another feels insecure, incomplete, and fearful. This includes your parents. So one day, if you keep at it, you will be able to do two contradictory things simultaneously: hold your parents accountable for how they hurt you, and forgive them.

Both are equally important. If you say, “My parents are monsters and don’t deserve forgiveness,” then you are stuck in blame and anger, which are as unsatisfying as the issues you are trying to heal from (in fact, they are merely a different manifestation of those same issues). If you say, because you don’t want to look like a judgmental person, “They did the best they could,” and shrug off your unhappiness about it, there is no real healing and thus no real forgiveness, which will also keep you stuck in blame and anger, even if you aren’t conscious of it (due to dissociation, which, without going through the process of understanding, accepting, and forgiving, is what such a stance is).

I have found that this is not a simple proposition. It took me many years of looking within to come to terms with my past in an honest, straightforward way that both named the truth and did not stand in judgment of it or expect anything different from it. I’m very glad I stayed with the process, though, because not doing so would have left me far more incomplete than I am today. I would most likely have stayed stuck in blaming and feeling like a victim, as that was my natural inclination; it is also one that unscrupulous therapists can feed on to maintain their client base, or one that we cling to in order to not leave the safety of our self-help group. So it is very important to know if we have such tendencies and to, after a certain point, not indulge them too much. What is that point? We can only know by cultivating the habit of looking within and being honest with ourselves to the very best of our ability.

Looking within and not blaming others does not mean be hard on yourself. Quite the opposite. If you look within and find a wounded child, you ought comfort her for as long as she needs to heal, to feel safe and loved. But this rarely requires the sense of entitlement and narcissistic self-absorption that people think it does when they first embark on the process. Learning to love and nurture yourself should increase your love for others, not decrease it.

A spiritual path, while necessary for other reasons, can also be helpful in not staying stuck in the narcissism that looking within sometimes encourages. In this context, “spiritual” means connecting with something greater and more all-encompassing than your own ego. And while a spiritual path is every bit as important as looking within, it too has its dangers. Many people substitute a spiritual practice for looking within in the belief that god is all the help they need or that the ego is unimportant. And while in the absolute sense both of these are true, we must be careful not to use spiritual practice a an excuse to ignore the parts of ourselves we’d rather not face. Otherwise, we simply end up stuck in a different way.

Looking within, and dealing with what you find as honestly as you are capable, is the key to everything. It is a lifelong process, intimately related to your sense of values, limited only by your own willingness and sense of adventure. Scary as this can be, one of the greatest exhilarations we can experience is the realization that there is no one to blame–not even ourselves.

Related reading:

Growth = Uncovering + Discovering

Ego, Narcissism, and Spiritual Development

Many may think the answer to this question is obvious, but often it is not. If your partner uses physical force or the threat of it when he’s angry or to make you behave a certain way, then yes, of course you are in an abusive relationship. But emotional abuse–belittling, shaming, derision, disappointment, name-calling, emotional blackmail, emotional distance, etc.–can be just as damaging even if it doesn’t result in bruises or broken bones, and it is far more difficult to ascertain.

When people grow up in dysfunctional families, whether that dysfunction takes the form of subtle invalidation (such as a pattern of emotional distance) or overt cruelty (such as physical or sexual abuse), they learn to not trust their feelings. This is a defense mechanism that enables a child to survive a less-than-nurturing environment, but it can cause big problems in adulthood. John Bradshaw defines feelings (emotions) as “tools that allow us to know when we’re fulfilling our needs.” People who lack these tools can make all kinds of bad choices, particularly in the personal realm. Like lacking an antibody against a virus, people lacking a reliable emotional guidance system are susceptible to all kinds of predators, perpetrators, and abusers; in many cases, not only do we lack good radar for avoiding mean people, but we are actually drawn to them because they re-create the childhood situations that feel as familiar as they do awful.

This can be a very difficult pattern to break because the malfunctioning emotional guidance system is also responsible for us not knowing if a person is treating us badly. One ubiquitous trait of adult abused children is “guessing at what is normal.” There is usually a tremendous cognitive dissonance between what we experience at home and what we see outside of it. Since a child doesn’t have the capacity to make sense of this, she will stop trying. When carried over to adulthood, this translates to not knowing the difference between respectful treatment and disrespectful treatment. Further complicating matters is not knowing that you don’t know, which makes change difficult. (There are many other facets complicating matters as well, but these are all I’ll address here.)

So you can begin to see that discerning abuse is not as straightforward as it might seem. Emotional abuse can be very, very subtle, and emotional abusers are very, very good at making their partners shoulder the blame and believe that they “deserve” what they get. Emotional abusers use fear and shaming tactics to erode what little self-esteem their partners have and to maintain the upper hand at all times. For these tactics to work, they need to find partners who won’t stand up for themselves. In this way, abusers and abusees are like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly–but complete the wrong puzzle.

One simple test to determine if you are in an emotionally abusive relationship is to ask yourself this question: How comfortable do I feel to be myself? You can determine this by gauging the level of spontaneity you feel in the relationship. For example, do you feel free to say what’s on your mind, to be silly, to be angry, to express your thoughts without any worry about his reaction? Or do you rehearse in your head what you’ll say and how you’ll say it to evoke the best possible response? I am not talking about times of stress, when we can all be touchy, but rather, as a general pattern in the relationship. If you find yourself rehearsing or worrying on a regular basis, there’s a good chance you are in an emotionally abusive relationship. And just because there are occasions of intimacy, caring, and a sense of connection does not change the truth that as a general rule, you do not feel free to be yourself. And that is an awful way to live.

A therapist once asked me this question: If a man is a wonderful, caring husband 364 days out of the year, but beats his wife on the 365th, is this an abusive relationship? At the time, I didn’t know (still having a lot of healing to do), but I gave the question a lot of thought. The answer, of course, is yes, it is an abusive relationship. Anticipation of that one day taints all the other days and makes a true partnership and true intimacy impossible. And this is the way of all abusive relationships. There is no hope and no future and no way to ever make it work. Yes, people change, but waiting for that to happen when there’s a good chance it won’t is a recipe for wasting your life. Far better to move on, scary as it can be. I have found that this simple act of self-care, whether leaving a relationship, a friendship, or a job that wasn’t right for me, has always resulted in abundant new levels of positive energy in my life, so much so that I’ve always looked back incredulously, wondering what I was so afraid of.

When you take care of yourself, the whole planet benefits.

This brings me to my second thought about this question, and the more relevant one, which is that rather than worry about labeling a relationship “abusive” or “addictive” or “dysfunctional” or anything else, the far more important concern is whether or not the relationship makes you happy. People who struggle with self-care because of abusive pasts tend to get too caught up in labels, I think because we trust labels more than we trust our own feelings, our own judgment, and our own capacity to make good decisions. We want the assurance and security of pointing to something outside ourselves for evidence and validation; we want to be able to say, “See? I’m not alone, I’m not wrong!” And while validation is nice, the search for it distracts us from the more pressing issue, the core issue, the issue underlying all of our problems with intimacy (and for that matter, everything else), which is that we need to learn how to decide for ourselves, independent of external authority, what we want.

What we want is enough; no external validation is required. When you see the issue in this light, asking yourself “Am I in an abusive relationship?” takes on an entirely different meaning. The very act of wondering this is an automatic admission that you aren’t happy and, having made that admission, you are now obligated to do something about it if your own happiness is important to you.

It is that simple. No further analysis is required. Yes, deciding what action to take and working up the courage to take it can be difficult, but you can no longer deny that some action is necessary.

If you are struggling with abusive relationship issues, there is help out there: shelters, self-help groups (like Al-anon), therapists, books. The Internet has made finding these resources easy, but if you can’t find help, please contact me and I’ll do what I can. Remember, it’s your life, it’s short, and nobody else can live it for you.

Good luck!

I enjoy watching interviews of people who’ve had a lifetime of success. Paul McCartney, for example, or Robert Plant, both of whom I’ve seen recently on talk shows. They are so comfortable with themselves, so relaxed, and they have an air of confidence that they seem to almost take for granted, but not at all in a vain way; just matter-of-factly. They’re kind, attentive, and they seem very present, yet they also seem to enjoy talking about themselves and how they got where they are. There is little or no sense of self-consciousness.

Of course, you don’t have to be rich and famous to have an air of confidence. We all know people who have a calm centeredness about them, who just seem to like themselves in a natural, unforced, unpretentious sort of way.

I think that’s true self-esteem.

For those of us who don’t have those qualities, they can seem mysterious and elusive. Our fears, anxieties, and preoccupations with our own shortcomings can feel like impossible obstacles to overcome. Yet the truth is, we can have self-esteem despite any shortcomings we may have; they have little to do with each other. (If they did, then no one would have self-esteem, because everyone has shortcomings!)

Self-esteem is, I think, a gravely misunderstood concept. Raising or improving self-esteem is huge business in the U.S., with several billion dollars a year going toward books, therapy, “life coaches,” classes, seminars, training sessions, empowerment lessons, hypnosis, and many other offerings, all devoted to increasing self-esteem. Children have a unique market of their own, including some version of all of the above, as well as esteem-building dolls, songs, television programs, schools, and who knows what else. (But I suppose that is another topic.)

Whether geared to adults or children, these methods are ineffective at best, but I think they can actually be harmful because they distract people from doing the things that actually will build self-esteem. People who use these methods tend to get lost in the messy, me-first quagmire of narcissism and entitlement that today passes for a healthy self-image; I suppose when you go to somebody else to do for you what you can only do for yourself, that’s about as close as you’re going to get.

This might sound strange coming from someone who is an outspoken advocate of therapy as a road to personal development. I still advocate therapy, as well as reading, self-help groups, positive affirmations, and really, any method that increases self-awareness and helps you get at the truth. But this is healing work, and it is a mistake to believe that any of this will actually create self-esteem.

Rather, this work is what I think of as the pre-cursor to building self-esteem. Having grown up in a very unhappy family, I had little emotional support and no role models for healthy self-care or self-love. Early adulthood was a maze of pain which I eased with drugs and relationships. If I hadn’t read a few books and found a good therapist, I probably wouldn’t be around today, much less writing this. So yes, therapy was life-saving for me, as well as getting sober and all the other work I did to heal and get to a place where I wasn’t constantly preoccupied with dulling my pain.

I am proud of this, of how hard I worked to heal and to gain insight, understanding, and self-awareness. I see it as an essential part of my path. But that work in itself did not build self-esteem. I’ve come to understand that while feeling good is important, it is not, contrary to popular belief, an end in itself. Rather, feeling good is merely a starting point from which you can answer the question, Now what? That is, from which you can figure out what you want and how to go about getting it.

This is self-esteem: figuring out what you want and taking action to get it.

I suppose I should clarify: I don’t mean what you want in a materialistic way. I mean what you truly want, what makes your heart sing and your spirit soar. Having the courage to discover and live by your deepest values and pursue what matters to you most.

So, while therapy and support groups and positive affirmations will help you feel better, the only way to build self-esteem is to accomplish something. Self-esteem is born of hard work. Commitment to values. Diligence. Focus. Study. Achievement. Taking risks. Losing your self in passion and excitement for something you love.

Having a purpose.

You don’t have to become the world’s greatest expert in your chosen field, although engaging in a process that gets you excited and makes you sweat (literally or figuratively) will inevitably result in proficiency, and thus, in confidence. Such confidence feeds on itself, creating new confidence to move in new directions and try new things, to see your failures as the logical result of your own effort and thus, as successes; to see your successes as the logical result of that same process, as well (and thus, to remain humble about them). Passionate commitment to one’s values creates an upward spiral that can only have positive results.

The two common factors that all confident people share are passion and a willingness to work hard. Robert Plant and Paul McCartney weren’t born knowing how to write songs and sing, but they both had a powerful drive to become good, and they were both willing to do what they had to in order to be successful. They’ve earned their self-esteem from a lifetime of commitment and accomplishment. We don’t all have to become superstars (in fact, few of us will), but we do all need to earn our self-esteem by engaging in this process. All the affirmations in the world can’t do it for us; they can only help get us to a point where we’re ready to do it for ourselves.

We all have fears and insecurities, and we always will. If yours are particularly bad, then by all means seek help in dealing with them. But know that there is no magical point at which you heal from being human and that, if you wait for that to happen, you deny yourself the opportunity to truly build self-esteem in the only way possible: through the defining of your own values, and the sweat of your own accomplishment.

In Stop Swimming Upstream, I talked about how fighting and avoiding unpleasant emotions saps energy and vitality. But another kind of upstream swim does the opposite, and is essential to personal development, happiness, spiritual growth, or whatever else you want to call the movement toward Wholeness: swimming upstream against the tide of popular sentiment.

We have to conform to certain standards of society. We have to pay bills, obey laws (or engage in civil disobedience against immoral ones), honor contracts, and meet obligations like going to work and taking care of our children. The whole idea of a society is that people must be held to certain standards of courtesy, decency, and respect for the rights and property of others. People unable or unwilling to conform to the basic rules and obligations under which they live tend to have a difficult time of it, achieving little success or worse, ending up in prisons or mental institutions.

But understand that I am talking only about basic standards. While we have to comply to standards in the interest of respecting the rights of other people and the contracts we’ve made with them, we are not in any way obligated to adhere to mainstream beliefs. We do not have to buy in to popular sentiment.

In short, our thinking is our own.

This is a very, very important distinction. Compliance to basic rules of courtesy and respect for others is imperative not only to a functioning society but also to our own self-respect, while accepting ideas–any ideas, but especially popular ones–without first giving them critical analysis brings an abrupt halt to our migration toward Wholeness.

From the time we’re young, we struggle between the polar extremes of conforming and trying to be an individual. We want to fit in, we want to feel a part of, we want the approval of the people we love and respect. Yet we have longings, thoughts, and creative impulses that make us who we are and cry out for expression. Even in a culture like the U.S., based on the freedom and inalienable rights of the individual, there is tremendous pressure to conform to popular ideas, and tremendous courage required to truly break free of the pressures to do so.

I say “truly” because a lot of behavior that looks like an expression of individuality really is not. Anything done to rebel against the norms of a culture is still tied to that culture. If you wear wild clothes, dye your hair blue, or get a lot of tattoos and piercings in an effort to be anti-authority, your efforts tie you to that authority because you are still defining yourself by the standards of that authority; rebellion is simply a different way to be stuck in the popular sentiments of your culture. So wearing an outlandish costume and getting a thrill out of shocking people won’t bring you any closer to the Wholeness you seek. It is far more a hindrance to finding one’s true self than a help, mostly because people confuse one for the other and then stop searching.

No, finding your own way and your own true voice is a prospect that involves moving beyond the norms of society altogether. It is far more an internal journey than an external one, one that involves critical thinking and analysis, answering questions like “what’s important to me?” and “what is my true heart’s desire?” And then figuring out a way to own and act on them. It isn’t about rejecting your society or scoffing at its shortcomings and hypocrisies (which all societies have); it is about following your own internal moral compass. You may end up rejecting your society’s values, and you may end up embracing them, or you may end up doing some of each. The point is that you arrived at your conclusions by engaging in a process of analysis and critical thinking guided by your own, internally-arrived-at values. You respect the rights of others, but you live by your own standards.

Living by your own standards truly is an upstream swim. We are pressured from all sides to conform, and we are ridiculed when we don’t. This is neither good nor bad; it is simply the nature of a society, which we ought accept as part of life. But most people reading this are fortunate enough to live in a society free enough to allow us to make our own moral choices. Doing so requires bravery–bravery to go against the tide, bravery to stand up to all the shame and criticism we are bound to endure, bravery to share our voice with the world, or even make the effort. But it is the people who possess such bravery who make a difference in other people’s lives, who stand as symbols for what we intuitively know to be the right path, who inspire us to chase our own greatness, who go down in history as philosophers and free-thinkers and champions of justice. They weren’t all right all the time, but their earnestness and efforts to do the right thing no matter what made them great regardless.

Our thinking is our own. And we should learn to use it to the best of our ability. If we do not come to hold this most basic value, we will never move past thinking about what other people want from us to finding out what we want from ourselves.

See also:

Leaving the Herd

The Illusion of Nonconformity

All evil is potentially vitality in need of transformation.– Sheldon Kopp, #20, Eschatalogical Laundry List

In a recent comment, Kara said, “I know some people who can’t stand to be sad, but spend a lot of time being angry. You can tell by what movies they watch, what lyrics they like, etc…” I think this is a great observation, and absolutely true.

Anger is so prevalent in our culture today, it could almost be considered the new Great American Pasttime. Violent movies full of profanity and blood; pounding music meant to stir our basest feelings–and television! Popular sitcoms are full of mean-spirited humor. Reality television has brought public humiliation to remarkable levels of sophistication. And the most popular sport in the country is Nascar, which, let’s be honest, people watch to see spectacular, flaming wrecks. Americans do seem to spend a lot of their free time engaged in cynical, negative, angry behavior.

What’s with all this anger?

Well, certainly part of it is just the human condition. People have enjoyed angry entertainment since the days of gladiators and chariot races. It’s an outlet, perhaps; a way to release agitation and aggression without actually being violent yourself. Normal and probably even healthy. But this brings some questions to mind. Where does this “normal” anger come from? Is all anger normal? Most interestingly, do people know they’re angry?

First of all, I think anger, like all other emotions, is just part of being human. It takes many forms, from mild frustration to physical violence; a psychologist once told me that boredom is even a form of anger. We have some anger practically from the moment we’re born, when we’re forced out of a warm, safe, comfortable place into a cold, drafty world where our needs are no longer instantly met. Frustrations continue throughout life, with new ones coming at every stage. If you watch a baby trying to take his first steps or communicate his wants without words, his frustration is evident. If you observe children playing with each other, you will always see some displays of aggression. Teenagers can be the cruelest people on earth, instinctively targeting those “different” than them. And while adults learn to rein in these impulses, the impulses themselves don’t go away. Rather, they get redirected to more pressing and practical concerns: career, relationships, day-to-day problems of life. Much anger gets transformed into determination, ambition, and other forces that drive people to action. Some doesn’t, and gets released through other channels like the above-mentioned entertainment, as well as physical exertion and creative expression. Some just stays there below the surface, on call for when we need to find a voice or right an injustice.

Anger is existential and normal, and nothing to feel bad about.

Is all anger normal? Well, yes, I think so. All anger is normal in the sense that it doesn’t form in a vacuum. It is the logical end result of life conditions. For some, though, this can be problematic. Abused children, for example, will inevitably become angry adults. Sometimes this anger can be very problematic indeed, intefering with some of life’s most basic functions. Yet even though such anger can cause heartbreakingly terrible problems, it isn’t abnormal. It is, in fact, a perfectly rational response to poor treatment. If you’ve ever watched someone abusing an animal, a child, or even another adult, you no doubt felt some form of outrage. Well, an abused child has this same reaction to her own abuse, but is largely unable to do anything about it. So the outrage builds and builds until one day, that child becomes an angry adult.

People rarely see such residual anger as normal, but I think it is. Not in the sense that it benefits a person, because it rarely does. But anger is an appropriate response to being treated badly. It would be far more disturbing if a person raised in an abusive environment didn’t have some sort of angry reaction; this would indicate a complete vacuum where one’s sense of self-worth should be. Thus, I think the problem lies less in the anger itself than in the denial of the anger. Which brings me to my next question: do people know they’re angry?

I think the most correct answer is “not usually.” Few people are comfortable with anger or able to see it in an objective light without placing a value judgment on it. We learn from a young age that it is “bad” to be angry: when we’re angry, we’re called childish, immature, unladylike, selfish, troublemaking, and other disapproving terms. And these are sometimes true–expressions of anger such as temper tantrums are childish–but it is also partly a way adults train children to conform to desired standards of behavior. If children want their parents’ approval, they learn to suppress their anger–and all children want their parents’ approval. So right out of the gate, people often learn to have a dishonest relationship with their anger, preferring to see it as almost anything else: depression, addiction, or sadness, for example. So rampant is the desire to not see oneself as angry that many of anger’s symptoms are now considered a literal disease–a brain disorder treatable with medication. Between the socially-sanctioned desire to not be angry and the medicalizing of unpleasant feelings, we’ve largely succeeded, as a culture, in disowning our anger almost completely.

But as I’ve said many times, disowning a feeling doesn’t make it go away; it merely buries it in the subconscious where it has to fight for recognition. And I think it’s possible that all the angry pasttimes people engage in are an attempt to integrate dissociated anger: that all the music, movies, television, sports, and other angry ways people spend their free time are one way their anger struggles for a voice.

Why does it need a voice? This is a big topic, but the gist is that what isn’t acknowledged keeps you stuck; you can’t address what “isn’t there.” If you don’t own your feelings, they own you. So instead of a normal expression within the range of normal human expression, anger gets turned into shame, depression, rage, hostility, bitterness, resentment, passive-aggressiveness, control, power-seeking, drama-seeking, thrill-seeking, addiction, racism, war, hatred, and more. Until anger gets its much deserved and necessary voice, it will continue to manifest itself in subversive, fundamentally dishonest ways that provide little or no emotional release and tend to make an individual feel worse rather than better. And this is the exact opposite of the normal and healthy function emotions are supposed to have.

The social stigma on anger is like a dam that holds back what should be a free-flowing stream. I don’t mean that people should be free to trounce on each other whenever they feel like it, because of course that is not okay. But that is not what healthy anger looks like. Healthy anger is simply an indication, neither good nor bad, that something you don’t like is occurring. By recognizing it as such, you have options: deal with it or get out of its way–the point being that whatever you decide, you decide with conscious awareness. By feeling afraid of or shameful about your anger, you rob yourself of this conscious awareness, and thus of these options. The result: people spending their free time trying to integrate their anger and not knowing it.

So getting back to Kara’s comment, yes, people do spend a lot of time being angry, but are mostly unaware of it. And this lack of awareness has created a lot of anger where there doesn’t need to be any. So pay attention to your pasttimes. Within them, there could be treasure trove of information that will lead you down a new path, one of self-discovery and self-awareness that you never knew possible. And next time you get angry, or even just think you might be getting angry, hold your head high and own the feeling with pride! It’s part of you, and it’s there for a reason! More importantly, you are far less likely to do something you might regret with it.

I must preface this post by saying that I had never heard of this book until ads for the movie came out, so I don’t know how much Hollywoodizing was done to turn the story into a romantic comedy where maybe there wasn’t one. If this is the case, I apologize to the author in advance for the opinion I am about to express here. But even if I’m wrong about the story, it doesn’t really matter, because I am speaking more to what catches the interest of the American public than I am to the story itself.

That said, if the story is actually about what the advertisements would have us believe, then–gag me! A woman spends a year of her life on a quest for self-awareness and fulfillment. She visits three very different parts of the world and spends her time doing three very different things. The first leg is in Italy, where she eats wonderful food. The second is (I’m assuming) in India, where she goes to an ashram and learns how to meditate. And the third takes place somewhere exotic (I don’t know where), where she has a blazing hot love affair with a sexy hunk of a man.

I can envision the movie executives discussing how to package and market this movie: “It’s a great story, but spirituality is boooring! We can’t sell a movie about spirituality! We have to make it about the sex!” “Yes, couldn’t agree more, Bob. And let’s bring in a smokin’ hot foreign actor to play the love interest!” “Yes! And let’s make the ashram scenes funny so they don’t put the audience to sleep!” “Brilliant! Well, now we’re gettin’ somewhere!”

Again, gag me.

Now, understand that I am not anti-romantic comedy. If you’re in the mood for lighthearted entertainment, without a lot of depth or realism, a romantic comedy can be fun. But this movie’s message–again, judging only by the ads–seems to be that romantic love will solve all your problems and bring you the bliss you so desperately desire.

Well, what’s wrong with that, you might ask. That is the plot of every romantic comedy. Yes, that’s true. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that in this one, the woman actually undertakes a spiritual practice, and apparently, finds it less significant than the love affair that comes afterward.

This whole idea that romantic love will bring us bliss and joy beyond our wildest dreams is just so wrong. Not only because it is a total falsehood that sets people up for misery and defeat, but also because of its absurd prevalence and priority in our society. People want to believe it, so they do. They sincerely believe that their sense of completion lies “somewhere out there,” either in the perfect mate, or the children that would result from union with such a mate, or both. This not only keeps people on a fruitless search, it keeps them distracted from the real search, which has far more to do with an internal journey than an external one.

Romantic love has no power to fulfill any needs or desires. It is not a magical fix for our problems, or, in fact, for anything. And the belief that it is is actually completely backward: rather than make you whole or fix what ails you, romantic love brings all your issues to the surface. It stirs up fears and insecurities, it does not subdue them. In doing so, it is an opportunity to become more whole, but in itself does not make you whole. Like everything else in life, it is merely another path. It just happens to be a particularly powerful one, which is why the giddy heights of new love can so quickly plummet into the deepest, dankest depths of misery.

This is not negative or cynical; it’s merely honest. And people who don’t accept this simple truth will forever be searching for fulfillment in all the wrong places.

All romantic comedies ignore this truth. And again, there’s not really anything wrong with that, as long as people understand that what they’re watching is fantasy, simple entertainment. But Eat Pray Love takes it a step further. The message of this movie (again, based on what I gather from the ads) is that romantic love triumphs over even the spiritual search–over the one thing that really can bring true contentment and true happiness, the one thing that really can answer all the important questions, the one thing that will enable us to put romantic love, as well as all other quests we undertake in life, into a more realistic perspective. In short, the one thing that really matters.

In that sense, I find this film–or at least the ads for it–to be not just indifferent to spiritual concerns, as most Hollywood films are, but actually antagonistic toward them.

I’m probably wrong. At least I hope I am. I hope this film goes beyond its marketing to have an important message about the process of self-discovery. But knowing how Hollywood likes to fit the human experience into neat, easily explainable little packages that won’t disturb or surprise anyone, I’m not expecting too much.